Colin Beveridge « The Better Practice Forum

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Leadership Myth #1: we are all leaders

by Colin Beveridge on July 9th, 2008

The Leadership industry should start being honest and stop wasting peoples’ time by pretending that everyone can become a leader with a bit more effort and, of course, the right training materials.

Picture credit: nicasaurusrex

The honest truth is that not everyone can be a leader; real life isn’t like Lewis Carroll’s Caucus Race, with prizes for all.

This truth shouldn’t really startle anyone, afer all where would Leaders find followers if everyone was a Leader?

By definition, leaders need followers and followers need leaders.

Notwithstanding the fundamental dyadic relationship between the two parties, which might provide leaders with followers, Leaders always need three more important dimensions to succeed:

Leadership quality
Opportunity
Favourable context

Quality
As far as leadership quality is concerned, you’ve either got it or you haven’t got it. For sure some people seem to find leadership effortless while others have to work at it. But at the end of the day, you can’t polish a turd. Harsh words? Perhaps, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Opportunity
It doesn’t matter how good a leader you might be, if you never get the chance to demonstrate leadership. In some organisations leadership opportunities are rarer than hen’s teeth, while other organisations may present opportunities at every turn – provided you know what a leadership opportunity looks like when it stares you in the face (see leadership quality above).

Context
But the killer factor for leadership is always, repeat always, the benefit of a favourable context.

Whoa there! I can hear some of you saying; what about a great leader like Ernest Shackleton, where was the favourable context that sealed his reputation as one of the greatest Leaders of all time?

I appreciate that Shackleton struggled against overwhelming odds to gain the survival of his crew in incredibly adverse circumstances but I contend that the very extreme nature of their adversity actually created a far more favourable context for Shackleton’s leadership than might have been the case if his crew hadn’t been in such a dire life or death situation.

Here truly was a natural leader who seized the leadership opportunity and succeeded by dint of translating disastrous circumstances, perhaps unwittingly, into a favourable context for successful leadership.

So why do I think the Leadership industry is not being honest?

Because I have yet to hear them admit the importance of the success factors outlined above (leadership quality; opportunity and context).

Instead they put far too much emphasis on personal skills development and leave their customers blithely wondering why their leadership isn’t working.

Annual cost of project failure in EU: 142 billion euro

by Colin Beveridge on July 7th, 2008

The annual cost of project failure in the European Union in has been estimated at €142 billion according to research by Dr John McManus and Dr Trevor Wood-Harper.

The research defines project failure as not meeting any or all of the following success criteria: cost, time, quality and original requirements.

According to the report, which looked at 214 projects between 1998 and 2005, seven out of eight projects failed.

This research is further serious evidence of the Trillion Dollar Bonfire and the urgent need for a remedial action

I am not talking about a new project management methodology, we already have too many methodologies; indeed, over-dependence on existing project management methodologies has been cited as part of the problem.

I am saying that we need a complete and radical overhaul of the way that organisations address Information Systems development. We need an effective IS development framework if we want effective information systems.

Is IT full steam ahead, or back to the future?

by Colin Beveridge on July 4th, 2008

I am getting mixed messages from connections in the IT industry; within the space of an hour yesterday I was told that things are “steaming ahead” by one person, while another observed “things are very, very tight, nobody is spending.”

This is hardly a scientific process but my gut feel and general observation of the UK IT user sector over the past few months give me a strong sense of deja vu: we are clearly in the same sort of downturn that we saw begin in the second quarter of 2001.

Seven years ago everyone started sitting on their hands as far as IT investment was concerned, with one notable exception – the Government sector. It seemed to me at the time that the only people spending money on IT were government bodies (central and local) to fulfil their e-government initiative obligations. That sectore kept IT ticking over in the UK for a couple of years until general confidence improved.

But now in the Summer of 2008, with the credit crunch, soaring energy costs and the spectre of high inflation rates, the IT sector seems to be trending down, without any saviour initiative on the horizon. I can’t see any compelling reasons for major technology investments, on a wholesale basis.

So it looks like we must buckle down until after the next General Election in 2010 and get ready for a prolonged period of retrenchment and rationalisation. By saying this I am not a doom-monger, or some sort of high-tech Cassandra, I am merely passing a considered opinion.

We are back to the future and the IT mantra will be: Do more with less.

So long and thanks for all the fits

by Colin Beveridge on June 30th, 2008

Bill Gates has stepped down from his last management position at Microsoft. One of the great achievements of Microsoft during his time at the helm has been to offer a standard platform on which enterprise applications can be developed. Bill’s greatest legacy to the corporate world is interoperability.

Microsoft’s success in the past three decades under Bill Gates was undoubtedly based on creating a lingua franca for enterprise computing, via application interfaces, that positively shaped technology management and provided a much-needed platform for skills.

For sure the ongoing Linux/ Open Source versus Windows debate could be seen as a re-run of the Betamax vs VHS battle – a clear instance where technical superiority lost out to an inferior product, not that I regard Windows as inferior BTW.

Nevertheless in the land of corporate IT, as well as the consumer market, Windows has brought us a major benefit – the interface standard.

I am old enough and ugly enough to remember the software configuration/ conflict resolution nightmares prior to Windows’ predominance and would not wish that on anybody again.

Another billion dollars of "wasted" IT?

by Colin Beveridge on June 23rd, 2008

From Computer Weekly: “The government has wasted at least half a billion pounds on overrun IT projects, according to figures collected by Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor Vince Cable.”

Congratulations to Vince Cable for highlighting more symptoms of the Trillion Dollar Bonfire. What we really need though is for Government to change their behaviour.

Taxpayers and politicians need to ensure that Government bodies adopt a proper approach to building effective information systems, and break out of the terribly debilitating habit of investing in IT projects.

How do you spot the Cinderella projects in your own organisation?

by Colin Beveridge on June 16th, 2008

We’ve all got one, haven’t we? A project that nobody wants to know, let alone be part of. Starved of resources and goodwill the staff on such Cinderella projects languish alone, apparently unloved by the rest of the organisation, while they wait desperately for a friendly Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming to rescue them from their life of drudgery amid the grime of the corporate data-kitchens.It’s fair to say, though, that the Cinderella project is often a self-fulfilling prophecy because it’s not the natural domain of the high profile, high-fliers, who have an uncanny knack of avoiding obscurity and potential career oblivion at all costs.

Ambitious people rarely wish to be associated with the mundane and clearly prefer to be involved with ground-breaking initiatives; unless, of course, the ground-breaking is simply a matter of digging the road up to get at the sewers. In which case you won’t see their heels for dust, as the go-getters get going and scramble unattractively to adorn themselves with the latest glitzy gewgaws of the more glamorous projects. A life of rags and ashes is definitely not their destiny of choice.

So we tend to find ourselves working with two quite distinct IT lifestyles, even within the same organisation, as the change agenda and workforce inevitably separate into the “sexy” and the “Cinderella” projects. Such is life.

And yet, in my experience, we eventually discover that it isn’t the high profile, more exciting, projects that actually deliver persistent value to the organisation.

Indeed so many of these high-flying initiatives have a frightening tendency to crash and burn, long before any chance of benefits realisation that we really should call these disappointing failures the Ugly Sisters, because they fail to deliver on their own perceived beauty and superficial attractiveness.

Whereas, it is the poor little Cinderella projects that are really more likely to add persistent value to their organisations by quietly and steadily carrying out the day-to-day chores with which the high-fliers didn’t want to soil their hands.

Wherever I have worked, I have always found that some of the most valuable people in the team are those unsung heroes who just get on steadily with the routine, possibly boring, tasks.

Too often, though, these paragons may not be well perceived by their peers and managers. Which is a tremendous mistake in my view because they not only have a good track record of delivery but also achieve their success in the face of adversity and indifference. These are the people who can usually save our bacon when things really get tough because they are much more likely to be both resourceful and pragmatic.

That’s why I honestly believe that the experience of working on the Cinderella projects is an essential grounding for all IT staff and should be part of the induction process for all new starters.

There are so many benefits from this approach, both to the individuals and to the organisation, that I find it hard to understand why we even think about letting people loose on the high risk, high profile projects until we have had a good opportunity of seeing how they handle being constrained by the lack of resources and kudos in Cinderella’s world.

But how do you spot the Cinderella projects in your own organisation?

Dead easy; just watch out for a purchase order that needs a signature for a pumpkin and six white mice. I’m sure someone in Finance will have given it a cost centre code.